Virgin Galactic hits back at Boeing with countersue for ""shoddy"" work

Virgin Galactic has countersued Boeing over its ""failures"" with Virgin's new space tourism aircraft, the ""mothership"" carrier/launch aircraft, VMS Eve. The company, founded by Richard Branson, said Boeing had repeatedly failed to ""deliver on its contractual obligations to Virgin Galactic"" and had led it to terminating its commercial ties with Boeing. The severing of the relationship came, Virgin claimed, ""despite having paid Boeing over $45 million for services and related tangible work product that has substantially less value to Virgin Galactic's business than the amount paid."" Virgin Galactic and Boeing had entered into a contract in 2022 for the design and manufacture of the Mothership aircraft. Boeing, which has been plagued with manufacturing and supply chain issues, had been selected under the assumption that it could deliver the services in a ""timely and complete manner."" However, Virgin said that Boeing had failed to deliver on its agreement and that it was ""consistent with Boeing's record of poor quality control and mismanagement."" It added: ""Boeing repeatedly provided shoddy and incomplete work product to Virgin Galactic that was so deficient that, in at least one instance, Boeing agreed that it needed to start over completely with its work."" It also claimed that the manufacturer had ""underdelivered"" intellectual property and technical artifacts that were reportedly essential to the company's mothership aircraft program. This had included tasks such as integrated baseline review and preliminary design review. A spokesperson for Boeing said: ""Virgin Galactic's assertions are without merit... we intend to vigorously defend our intellectual property and the work performed."" The lawsuit was filed at the US district court for the central district of California southern division. Boeing had previously filed a lawsuit against Virgin Galactic back in March at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, claiming the latter had stolen trade secrets and failed to pay $25 million for the work already complete by its research subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences on the Eve aircraft. The alleged stolen trade secrets include ""a set of proprietary mathematical equations used to design and model aircraft"" and ""a set of proprietary test data"". Boeing added: ""Virgin Galactic has also refused to honour its contractual obligation to destroy the two sets of trade secrets...Virgin Galactic’s ongoing, unauthorised retention and use of these trade secrets to develop a new mothership deliberately deprives Boeing and Aurora of their exclusive property rights and imposes irreparable harm by risking exposure to other competitors, after which the information cannot retain its secret status."" Virgin stated in its recent filing: ""Boeing is now attempting to wrongfully claw back certain intellectual property duly owned or licensed to Virgin Galactic under the parties’ contract."" Boeing recently announced leadership changes, including CEO Dave Calhoun to leave his position at the end of the year, following the company's spate of manufacturing and safety issues.